This specification describes technologies relating to search query suggestions and search results.
The Internet provides access to a wide variety of resources, for example, video files, image files, audio files, or Web pages, including content for particular subjects, book articles, or news articles. A search system can select one or more resources in response to receiving a search query. A search query is data that a user submits to a search engine to satisfy the user's informational needs. The search queries are usually in the form of text, e.g., one or more query terms. The search system selects and scores resources based on their relevance to the search query and on their importance relative to other resources to provide search results that link to the selected resources. The search results are typically ordered according to the scores and presented according to this order.
Search systems can provide search suggestions to users to help users satisfy their informational needs. As used herein, the term “query suggestion” is a suggested data for a query that can be used to refine a search or refine a search strategy. Some search systems provide query suggestions in the form of a list of query suggestions as the user is typing a query. The user can select one of the query suggestions from the list without having to type the entire query suggestion. A client device typically sends suggestion requests to a search engine with each keystroke, and the search engine provides the query suggestions with prefixes that match the entered characters. Once received, the client device displays these suggestions for user selection.
Such query suggestion systems work fairly well and enrich the user experience. However, these systems still require multiple inputs from users. For example, a user must select one of the suggestions by means of a keyboard input, mouse click, or some other input. The user may also need to provide an additional input to cause the selected query to be sent to the search system, such a pressing a return key.
Once the query is processed by the search system, the search system returns search results responsive to the query. However, if the search results do not satisfy the user's informational need, the user must begin entering a new query.
Some search systems also provide predicted search results with query suggestions. Many query suggestions, however, are not selected by a user. As a result, the user may receive many search results that do not satisfy the user's information need. Additionally, the bandwidth requirements to send search results are more than the requirements for sending suggestions. As a result, the search system utilizes excessive bandwidth.